Even if you don’t spend a lot of time online, you’ve probably heard “Bed Intruder,” the similar “Double Rainbow” song, or the “Auto-Tune the News” series at some point over the past year. As you may know, the Gregory Brothers created all of them with the help of a large cast of “unintentional singers” including crime victim Antoine Dodson, featured above.

But you may not know that one of the Gregory Brothers is a woman — and you almost certainly didn’t know that the four-person crew is working on a pilot for Comedy Central, as they told Wired.com in an exclusive interview.

It’s no exaggeration to claim The Gregory Brothers have invented a completely new art form that is perfectly suited to our meme-crazed times, and — most difficult to replicate — is incredibly well made. Their skills are obvious and their ears perceptive, as evidenced by the way in which they mimic pop music tropes to perfection. And they’re popping up everywhere these days; they even made the soundtrack for the parody Twitter movie trailer.

“Bed Intruder,” released two weeks ago, just broke eight million views on YouTube. The extended version reached No. 3 on iTunes’ the R&B chart and No. 25 on its overall chart. It’s not just a meme, it’s music — perhaps the music of our time. Hundreds of other artists of all stripes — everyone from acoustic folk duos to marching bands — have already covered the song.

We caught up with The Gregory Brothers on Thursday afternoon to discuss “Bed Intruder,” their noble practice of splitting all sale proceeds 50/50 with unintentional singers like Antoine Dodson, and their upcoming pilot for a television show set to debut on Comedy Central next year.

Wired.com: Without divulging too much magic, can you walk us through how you make a song like “Bed Intruder”?

Michael Gregory: It depends on the project we’re doing. For this one, I really wanted to listen to the contours of [Antoine Dodson’s] voice, and the way that he was emoting. I’ve done this enough so that when I heard him talk, I could hear the melody, and that melody kind of changes connotation depending on what key I put it in. Then I do the instrumental track and put it on top.

Evan Gregory: If you’re interested in a lot of detail, we have an educational video out on our channel on YouTube that offers a behind-the-scenes look at our process.

Michael: Sometimes in our videos, we include a lot of singers, and when we do, we might arbitrarily use a beat that we’re going to shape them all to. But Antoine, you know, he kind of owned the song — this was going to be all him — so I wanted [the beat] to be specific to that.

Wired.com: Well, it’s fantastic. This one has been stuck in my head, it’s really been haunting me and a lot of other people too. The video broke seven million views in ten days, and people say in the comments that they keep coming back to listen. All of those views are monetized through YouTube’s Partner Program — I remember the Susan Boyle incident, where she had 100 million views and none of them were monetized, so they made nothing. I understand if you don’t want to give us a dollars and cents figure, but do you have any idea how much you’re making from YouTube on this video?

Michael: We don’t have pre-roll ads or anything.

Evan: You get a higher revenue rate if you’re running lengthy pre-roll ads where you have to watch Clairol Herbal Essences for 30 seconds before you see Antoine Dodson. We don’t do that. Our only ads are the text overlays —

Michael: — the ones you can X out. So really, our main bread and butter, for this at least, has been putting it up on iTunes.

Wired.com: It was No. 3 in the R&B section. ITunes is a more straightforward thing, can you address how much you make from there without divulging stuff you don’t want to divulge?

Andrew: Not only did it rise to No. 3 on the iTunes R&B charts and No. 15 on the pop charts, but it ended up at No. 25 on the overall iTunes chart. We don’t have the numbers, except for comScore numbers for Saturday and Sunday. [iTunes sold 10,571 copies in the first two days alone.]

Wired.com: Do you ever get push back from the people in your videos? I saw a follow-up news story about Antoine Dodson, and he was just completely psyched about becoming this internet star, which could be enough. You guys definitely write the musical composition and create the art, but he wrote some of the lyrics of the song. Are the people in these videos part of the financial picture?

Evan: On the financial angle, Antoine is participating in all of the revenue from the sale of anything we do [with the song], 50-50.

Michael: We’re really breaking “unintentional singing” ground, so we’re trying to set precedents by making it so that Antoine, or whoever that artist might be in the future, has a stake not only as an artist but as a co-author of the song. It’s like you said: He wrote the lyrics, he’s the one who put it out there. What we’re doing on iTunes and on any other sales, we’re splitting the revenue after it gets through Apple down the middle. And that [also applies] if we ever license the song for TV or a movie. Whatever happens to the song, he has a 50 percent writing credit. And we have the same agreement with Paul Vasquez, co-writer of the “Double Rainbow” song.

Wired.com: That’s the one that got stuck in my wife’s head. The way I see it, you’ve invented an art form that’s the perfect thing for these times. It creates memes, and the musical quality is very high, which distinguishes it from a lot of the other videos out there. Is this what you guys are going to do, forever, hopefully?

Michael: We’re really having fun with it, and we’ve been musicians and composers for a long time in different genres. For me, this was just a new, novel way to make music that hasn’t really been done before, and I’m loving doing it. In the future, we could certainly continue to do this, or we could just make music the way people normally do. Also, we’re doing a pilot right now.

Sarah: We amuse each other, and luckily, other people seem to think we’re amusing too. So we’re actually going to be working with Comedy Central to produce a pilot in the coming months.

Wired.com: Wow. Is the show going to be along the lines of “Bed Intruder” and “Auto-Tune the News,” or is it more of a behind-the-scenes look at you guys?

Sarah: It will have a musical component, and it will certainly be based on a lot of internet culture.

Evan: But it will be mostly behind the scenes.

Michael: Where we’re coming from, and where people know us from, is certainly important in how we’re shaping the show.

Wired.com: Fantastic. Is there any idea when that might air?

Michael: It wouldn’t be until next year — I think we’d be surprised if it was as soon as next spring.

Wired.com: Is there anything else you want to tell us? I want to tell you that my appreciation of Katie Couric went through the roof as a result of her singing voice [in Auto-Tune the News #2].

Evan: She, like Antoine Dodson, has ascended to the highest tiers of the unintentional singing hall of fame.

Wired.com: Anything else?

Sarah: We love Wired.

Evan: We work on a lot of different projects and love all the different things we do, but we just want to give credit to the unintentional singers out there who really drive this music, and they deserve all the credit.

Wired.com: This one is truly amazing — it’s tongue-in-cheek, but kind of heartfelt too. It straddles this line that didn’t seem possible to straddle. These songs are probably getting played in clubs.

Michael: The biggest compliment so far is that we saw an upload of a marching band playing it last night.